ON FORM

On Saturday I watched the Grand National on TV and it was won by the unfancied nag Rule the World at 33-1, pipping my lovely wife’s selection The Last Samurai. Rule the World was, as we racing aficionados say, “on the bit”, and he strode out beautifully, not bothered by his inexperienced but thrilled jockey 19-year-old David Mullins and making ecstatic his well-known Irish trainer, who sadly recently lost a son, Mouse Morris. He was magnificently “On Form” – my own selection, highly respected Holywell, fell ignominiously at the second of thirty fences. Naturally my mind turned to the joy of being On Form and its sad reverse.

Rule the World romps home

As this is also the Augusta Masters weekend, we remember other demonstrations and lapses in form. For years Tiger Woods was a worthy Master (4 times winner) almost unbeatable on the luscious manicured fairways of Augusta. Then suddenly his demons congregated and he lost it, now a shadow of the thrilling golfer he once was. We also remember Rory McIlroy in 2011 leading by 3 strokes on the last day and then blowing it with a horrendous final round of 80 - off form with a vengeance. Thankfully he redeemed himself the next year and he remains a great golfer, but this year record-breaking Jordan Spieth blew it on with a 7 at the short 12^th and Danny Willett (of England no less!) deservedly seized the green jacket.

We all know individually when we are on form, the easy fluency and charm, the persuasive arsenal of phrases and gestures finding their target, the warm approbation of friends and colleagues. We go home happy that we have done justice to ourselves; we have performed. Such moments are highly satisfying but they cannot be depended upon. Somewhere in our physical mechanism there is a vulnerable spot, inviting the insertion of the proverbial spanner into our works. Instead of shining, we stutter and haver, our tact deserts us, our phrases sound hollow and empty, our audience look at their feet rather than in our eyes: we know we have failed and we keep awake at night cringing at our embarrassing ineptitude. We should not overdo the agonising – like any other mammal we blow hot and cold, our temperaments have their ups and downs and steering a happy medium through life is frankly boring.

I have some sympathy with David Cameron, who certainly has had a difficult week, what with a row over £9m on an anti-Brexit pamphlet (a Government must be entitled to a point of view) and the furore over his Dad Ian’s past involvement with Panamanian entities. Much of the sound and fury is synthetic or misplaced. Ian Cameron was a stockbroker and of course he marketed shares to a well-heeled clientele: tax planning (the polite term for “tax avoidance”) is part of the warp and weave of commerce. If investment business can lawfully be channelled through tax havens in Panama, Cayman Islands or the BVIs, so be it – it is up to the HMRC to introduce restrictive legislation if they so wish. Until then, keep mum. Pretending that Cameron had some higher duty to eschew the whole area seems hypocritical to me. He is a citizen like any other and if Jeremy Corbyn and his gang want to use this as a club with which to beat the Prime Minister, their driving force seems little more than the politics of envy based on the fact that they cannot abide anyone more successful and richer than they are. Cameron admits he could have handled the matter better – he was simply off-form.

Pantomime not Art with A Midsummer Night's Dream

He is in good company being off-form. William Shakespeare could be brilliant, inspirational and almost life-changing. His tragedies in particular reach the heights of genius. But he has his duds too – I submit The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, Titus Andronicus and A Midsummer Night’s Dream respectively too unfunny, too tedious, too gruesome and too fanciful to deserve serious study. Yes, the Bard had his off-days; even in otherwise gripping Macbeth the action is paralysed by the leaden comedy of The Porter’s scene. Did old Will sometimes have a tin ear? Even allowing for the peculiarities of Jacobean “humour”, I think, to borrow Salinger’s expression from Holden Caulfield, Will was “as sensitive as a toilet-seat” when he wrote this scene. Similarly, William Wordsworth cannot fail to move with his matchless poetic diction in The Prelude but he was also guilty on an off-day of composing his ineffably feeble The Thorn.

It is a Monday as I write and we all tend to be slow to warm up on this gloomy day. But I implore you to down that bracing tonic, calibrate your well-tuned physique, think positively, skip outside and scintillate!

SMD

11.04.16              

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

AMERICAN RABBLE-ROUSERS

As we Brits sit open-mouthed, disbelieving and appalled (even if leavened by a tiny frisson of admiration) when we hear the latest pronouncement from Republican front-runner Donald Trump, we cast an anxious eye over our feeble collection of politicians. While Boris Johnston and Jeremy Corbyn are at the foothills of total idiocy, America has a long and proud tradition of demagoguery and quackery of which The Donald is just the most recent and inflated example.

Donald Trump tries to look thoughtful

Trump has the full armoury of the ignoramus and the bigot, hatred of foreigners, especially poor migrants, contempt for women, hostility to “Washington”, boundless egotism and a view of America that would make the most chauvinistic blush. His rhetoric strikes a chord with those alienated by the modern world and by saloon-bar blowhards who find in Trump a kindred spirit. His views were shared by many a predecessor and I mention some now.

The aptly named Know-Nothings who flourished 1854-6 were a grouping of Protestant men who opposed slavery but also Catholics and immigration. They formed the American Party and were strong in Massachusetts, but never found a real leader; their nominal standard-bearer was the ex-President Millard Fillmore, but he was a dud both as President and as rabble-rouser.

Bryan inflames the 1896 Democrats

Much more successful was William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic populist from Nebraska who won his party’s presidential nomination for the elections in 1896, 1900 and 1908. He shot to fame with his championing of bi-metallism (linking the currency to silver as well as gold) at the 1896 Democratic convention with his celebrated speech declaiming You shall not crucify mankind upon a Cross of Gold. Bryan was isolationist, hostile to big business and anti-imperialist. As his political influence waned, Bryan became a star-turn on the Chautauqua Circuit lecturing on fundamentalist religion and opposing the teaching of evolution. Current US religiosity and creationism are his direct legacy. Bryan made a fool of himself in the Scopes trial of 1925 with his dire scientific ignorance and HL Menken penned a devastating obituary of this charlatan on his death soon after.

Enigmatic Huey Long in 1935

                                     

A rabble-rouser from the Left was Huey Long, Democratic governor and senator from Louisiana, who did good works on education, health and infrastructure in his previously neglected state. He denounced the banks and in particular Standard Oil and had a Share our Wealth programme, employing many socialist nostrums, which played well in the Depression. He wanted to control everything himself and ignored inconvenient democratic restraints when it suited him. He was assassinated in 1935 and it is said that this populist was a proto-Fascist and potential challenger to FDR. He has perhaps inspired Bernie Sanders in his wilder fancies.

Nearer the present is George Wallace, adamant defender of segregation, white supremacy and scourge of “pointy-headed” American intellectuals. A former Democratic Governor of Alabama, Wallace won 5 states and almost 10m votes in the election of 1968, a very strong showing. He ran as an Independent with militaristic running mate General Curtis LeMay, whose praise of the use of nuclear weapons was a drag on Wallace’s campaign – Bombs way with Curt LeMay! - his enemies jeered. A would-be assassin crippled Wallace a few years later and he lost his old puissance.

Wallace, with his hooded eyes, had a distinctly sinister aspect and Trump with his baroque hairstyle and often scowling manner can remind us of George, who wowed the Southern white-trash, just as Donald sets the moronic mid-West a-whooping. As we say up North, There’s Nowt so queer as Folk.

Menacing George Wallace

This unlovely tradition of rabble-rousers moves us back to Donald Trump. Let The Donald speak for himself:

 “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud"

 “Ariana Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.” 

 “I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words

 “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best.  They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bring crime. They’re rapists… And some, I assume, are good people.” 

 “Our great African-American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore.”

“All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” 

 “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”

 “It’s freezing and snowing in New York – we need global warming!” 

 “I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” 

 “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” 

“I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.” 

"The point is, you can never be too greedy”

Racism, sexism, creepiness, boastfulness and ignorance are Trump’s stock in trade. It is almost incredible that Trump’s only serious Republican rival is the even worse extremist Ted Cruz. So he might easily walk off with the nomination. He would face experienced Hillary Clinton, who can rationally debate the great issues of the day but whose record is pock-marked and whose personality is ice-cold. Unhappy America to have such a choice!

But let the US keep hold of her sanity. Trump in unelectable, wholly devoid of presidential qualities and, to lower the tone to Trump’s level, I pass this verdict – Donald Trump is a clownish wanker, deserving execration and a volley of rotten vegetables hurled at his ludicrous barnet.

SMD

4.04.16

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2016

BREXIT - PAST AND PRESENT CONFUSIONS

To say that British attitudes to Europe have been exceedingly ambivalent is almost to understate the case. A profound hope that Europe would succeed and that continental Europe would unify were mixed with scepticism that historic divisions could be surmounted and cynicism that political morality could be sustained. Yet the economic success of the EEC galvanised underperforming Britain to apply for membership, achieved in 1973 after two French vetoes. Relations with Europe have often been fractious and the impetus towards EU centralisation has hit many sensitive nerves; the introduction of the Euro, which Britain declined to join, has added a layer of complication. 

It is natural that we should examine our origins in Europe and learn lessons from our erstwhile leaders. Winston Churchill, in a memorable and moving speech in Zurich in 1946, proposed the Council of Europe, actually formed in 1949, as a prelude to the move towards “a kind of United States of Europe” and encouraged reconciliation between France and Germany.

Churchill advocates European unity

It never occurred to Churchill that Britain herself should join in this enterprise. Britain had her large Commonwealth and an intense national post-war pride; he viewed Britain as a great power acting in cooperation with the USA and the USSR. He was personally sponsoring (while in opposition) the recovery of prostrate Europe, mobilising his unique prestige, to inject some new vision into France and Germany, ruined and humiliated by their wartime activities. Back in office in 1951, the conservatives maintained a friendly but remote relationship with Europe, sending only a low-level delegation as observers to the crucial Messina conference in 1955 which led to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, creating the 6-nation Common Market. Anthony Eden was very doubtful about its future success while Labour’s Clem Attlee was gruffly dismissive. Know them all well. Very recently this country spent a great deal of blood & treasure rescuing four of ’em from attacks by the other two…..!

Britain’s faltering economic performance in the 1950s and 1960s, the Suez debacle and the disintegration of the solidarity of the Commonwealth, convinced Harold Macmillan and officialdom that the only solution was for Britain to apply for membership of the EEC. He was frustrated by a de Gaulle veto in 1963, repeated to the Harold Wilson ministry in 1967. De Gaulle was partly animated by a dislike of “Anglo-Saxon” influences, but he was acutely aware of how different Britain was from continental Europe. His analysis rings true today:

 England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries; she pursues essentially industrial and commercial activities, and only slight agricultural ones. She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.

MacMillan was an unusually radical Tory (more accurately a Whig) and although he failed in Europe, his lieutenant and eventual successor Edward Heath completed successful accession negotiations in 1973, once de Gaulle gave way to Pompidou. Heath was a moderniser and a managerial type who saw the Treaty as essentially a trade agreement; he had no time for historic legacy (expressed by dissenters like Enoch Powell) and he dismissed as airy rhetoric the preamble to the Treaty which pledged signatories to “ever closer Union”. But it was seriously intended. Some Labour figures remembered the 1962 warning from Hugh Gaitskell to consider membership very carefully:

It does mean, if this is the idea, the end of Britain as an independent European state...it means the end of a thousand years of history.

Heath ploughed on regardless and his policy enjoyed widespread support; but the UK electorate had not debated these issues at all deeply.

The EEC did not provide Britain with the economic stimulus it needed. There were quarrels about the level of farming subsidies, the sharing of fisheries; the long-trusted trade links between the UK, Australia and New Zealand were abruptly broken. Trade with the EEC grew but Britain remained the sick man of Europe. Margaret Thatcher presided for 11 years over far-reaching reforms of British institutions and policies and by the mid-1980s the UK’s economic performance was transformed and has been broadly satisfactory ever since. The abrasive Thatcher style made the EU more accommodating and gradually barriers to the single market in services were reduced.

Best of enemies - Jacques Delors and Margaret Thatcher in 1989

While respected UK politicians such as Roy Jenkins played enthusiastic roles in Europe, Eurocrats like Jacques Delors (10 years President of the Commission) pressed on with an integrationist agenda and John Major struggled to convince his party that this was an appropriate direction of travel. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty formally created the European Union and set out a programme for the introduction of the Euro, the common currency. The UK had joined the ERM but speculation against the pound forced her out on Black Wednesday, a heavy political setback for the Tories but the start of a strong economic recovery. Many Tories swore never again to join a European currency project. Would Thatcher have signed the Maastricht Treaty? Her political secretary, Charles Powell, says yes, but Bill Cash, arch-Eurosceptic MP recently produced a 2002 letter from Maggie declaring she never would have done so.

Whatever, the British tide of disillusion with Europe quickly rose and the uneasy relationship worsened as the economic crisis took hold in 2008. The Euro had been introduced to 18 countries, with Britain declining to participate: its central bank and the EU Commission handled the crisis badly and the dominant economy within the zone, Germany, came to exercise a hegemonic control. This offended many other nationalities in the EU – the Common Market had been founded precisely to avoid such an eventuality. The EU record on Greece, on migration and on combatting terrorism gives no confidence and its undemocratic ways are actually frightening.

In the hope of lancing the boil of discontent with Europe, David Cameron had promised a referendum after a renegotiation aimed at liberalising the EU. The renegotiation failed to elicit any substantial change and the Tory Party in Parliament is evenly split between the Leavers and the Remainers, the Party in the country probably favouring Brexit. Labour are mainly Remainers if they tow the party line, but Corbyn is not an effective leader. Nigel Farage will try to re-mobilise the 3m UKIP voters, strongly in favour of Brexit while the SNP promise Scotland will vote to stay.

Boris and David slug it out

The campaign so far has been uninspiring. Many an assertion and counter-assertion but no very convincing economic analysis, only arid lists of business signatories for In or Out. A rather crude Project Fear from the Remainers has exaggerated the dangers of exit, the threats to security, the unemployment level and the dire fate of sterling. We await some solid sense from cerebral wallflower Michael Gove and some passion from bland David Cameron. Boris Johnson is an excellent comic turn (a cut above Donald Trump) but his national leadership credentials are not obvious. His bumbling, contradictory pronouncements are not a boon to clarity but maybe it will all get better as 23 June comes nearer.

I think Britain does not remotely fit into the EU as it has evolved. I am fortified in my Brexit views by the belief that my political mentors, Gaitskell and Thatcher, would approve. We shall prosper and can only live within the kind of society we want, if we now vote Leave.

SMD

27.03.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

SET IN STONE

The distinguished architectural writer Alec Clifton-Taylor was a particular authority on the materials used in Britain’s buildings and certainly Britain is made more beautiful by the use of some lovely native stone. English cathedrals, parish churches and some towns are often particularly blessed and while the modern world is much dominated by brick and concrete, stone remains the finest of materials, the material which lasts centuries and you cherish in “the deep heart’s core”.

I was raised in Aberdeen and had the good fortune to live my youth in a majestic Victorian house in Rubislaw Den South, one of the finest city streets. The houses there and in much of the city were built of the famous grey, sparkling Granite extracted from Rubislaw Quarry nearby – every day one heard the stone- blasting in the deep quarry, becoming exhausted and closed since 1971. I loved the granite and our house sported two fine cylindrical columns framing the entrance and in the 1960s I used daily to touch the columns and gave thanks for the privilege of living in such splendour.

Rubislaw Den South houses

Aberdeen, the Granite City

 

There was a great Victorian vogue for Aberdeen Granite on tombstones (not always in sympathy with earlier tombs) but it is still used as an expensive building material often as a solid facing for banks, subtly concealing the bankers’ spines of jelly and feet of clay!

Edinburgh’s native stone is a variety of hard Sandstone, most famously from the Craigleith quarries, which adorns much of the New Town and was exhausted by 1895. Register House and Charlotte Square are clad in this stone and architect Robert Adam was so fond of this elegant material he transported it to London for Chandos House, Queen Anne Street in 1771.

Register House, Edinburgh in Craigleith stone

Chandos House, London

London has no local building stone and has imported stone for centuries. Kentish Ragstone, a rough, durable limestone, is plentiful and was much used in medieval Westminster Abbey and in many other churches and to good effect in Kent itself for the Archbishop’s Palace at Maidstone.

Archbishop's Palace, Maidstone in Kentish Ragstone

Much the most famous stone to be imported into London was Portland Stone, from the Jurassic Portland Island in Dorset. Christopher Wren moved tons of this stone to London by barge and gave us St Paul’s Cathedral among many others. The Cenotaph erected by Lutyens in 1919 in Whitehall is also in gravely respectful Portland Stone.

St Paul's Cathedral in Portland Stone

 

The Cenotaph too

                         

Perhaps the finest building to be erected in England in the 20^thcentury was the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, designed by Giles Gilbert Scott in 1903 and not completed until 1978. It is a colossal building with stunning vistas, much enhanced by the Rose Sandstone used, diffusing light, colour and shadow throughout from its matchless elevated position overlooking the city.

Rose Sandstone for the Anglican Cathedral, Liverpool

There are many other hotspots of cherished stone – Cornwall has its Granite (which I find rather too dark), Wales rejoices in Slate, while unpromising but ubiquitous Flint can look very well if dressed and combined with another stone as in the exterior of the Suffolk churches of Lavenham and Long Melford.

But I want now to move on to my, and everyone’s, favourite English stone, the mellow Oolitic Limestone associated with Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, the Cotswolds and Bath.

In years past, before the motorway network was developed, we used to drive from Scotland to London by the AI and a memorable stop-over was Stamford, Lincolnshire. A splendid historic town, with surviving 17^th and 18^th century buildings Stamford’s local stone is much in evidence here as it is at Lincoln Cathedral further North.

Limestone delights in Stamford, 

For 7 years I lived in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds in semi-retirement, surrounded by some of the loveliest villages in England. The gentle Cotswold escarpment contains unspoiled settlements and the stone is so distinctive.

Stanton, Gloucestershire

Chipping Campden, almshouses and church

Descending West you soon get to the astonishing city of Bath with its renowned stone and glorious architecture. However to my mind Cotswold stone is best displayed at the University of Oxford where I misspent 3 highly agreeable years in the 1960s.

Brasenose College and vistas from Radcliffe Square, Oxford

How fortunate we British are to live in a beautiful country among unrivalled townscapes, hewn from stone of the highest quality!

SMD, 19.03.16, Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

BOOTS

Rather breathlessly, (I need to shed a good few pounds), hauling on a pair of stout boots, proof against the perils of the English winter, I thought how useful these workaday items are and how much they have improved in my lifetime. Of course there is also a dazzling selection of up-market wellies, as worn by the plutocrats, the Royals and the country set, British Hunters and Barbours, US Muck Boots and eye-wateringly expensive French offerings from Le Chameau. Seems a shame to make them dirty, but from Glastonbury to Burghley, mud, glorious mud is inevitable.

Le Chameau Chasseur, a snip at £340

Ignoring such exotica, in my youth 60 years ago, stout leather boots were reckoned either exclusively military or irredeemably proletarian. The noisy spit-and-polish parade ground, the factory or the farmyard were the natural home for those hob-nailed or tackety objects. Those days are long gone and the Forces (bless ‘em all) have recently ordered a rather fetching pair of new combat boots.

The new combat boots

No longer all-leather but of light practical materials, rubber-soled, easily laced up, they are now coloured brown – black boots are only required for ceremonial occasions.

We civilians can don our US-influenced Timberlands, our Clark’s or a hundred other excellent outdoor brands while the ladies pose deliciously in their cosy Uggs or elegant Guccis or Chanels.

Boot does not always have pleasant connotations: to give someone the boot is summarily to dismiss them, to kick them out. A boot camp tends to be a military prison with a harsh regime. To submit someone to the boot is to crush their feet and lower leg in a boot-shaped instrument of torture. Not our agreeable kind of boots at all. We British heap all manner of clobber into the boot of our car, especially on that holiday trip. The US calls it a “trunk” – where are the elephants?

In “the good old days” there was a servant known as the Boots who, especially in hotels and inns, scraped, cleaned and polished the footwear of patrons. The most famous Boots was Sam Weller, discovered by Mr Pickwick in the White Hart Inn at Borough, Southwark. His Cockney wit was hugely enjoyed by the 1830s reading public and he was crucial to the early success of Charles Dickens.

Sam Weller, Mr Pickwick's servant

But say the word “Boots” to a British audience and it will instantly assume you are talking about Boots the Chemist, the chain of pharmacies seen on almost every British High Street and shopping centre. The business was founded in 1849 as a herbalist by John Boot but developed by his son Jesse Boot (poor fellow to have such a moniker inflicted upon him!) in Nottingham and prospered mightily. By 1914 there were 560 Boots shops in Britain and Jesse became Baron Trent. The company remained a UK public company until 2006 and then after various private equity transactions and option exercises, Boots fell to the US chain Walgreens. Boots was a philanthropic company, caring for its employees and assisting the city of Nottingham. But the world moves on….

Being an old-fashioned chap, I cherish the now archaic use of the expression “What boots it?” – What does it avail? This 1859 verse from Edward FitzGerald encapsulates the fatalism in his wonderful translation of The Rubiaiyat of Omar Khayyam and undermines our assumptions about Victorian attitudes.

Ah, fill the Cup – what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn Tomorrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if Today be sweet!

SMD,

 10.03.16,

 Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

ON THE DEFENSIVE

As I breathe in the bracing air of Folkestone in March, I observe on the coast down to Hythe and Dymchurch a fine selection of Martello Towers, those flat-topped strong-points built to defend Britain from a Napoleonic invasion in the early 1800’s. They were garrisoned by an officer and 20 men and would sport an artillery piece, the flat roof giving a 360 degree line of fire. These Towers, rather like those concrete tank-traps that littered our post-WW2 beaches, were never used in anger and I fell to musing about the defensive mentality and its perils.

Martello Tower at Folkestone

The art of fortification no doubt originated with the Ancients but in the modern era the great names were the Marquis de Vauban, whose walled cities adorn France, and the Russian Eduard Todleban, the hero of the defence of Sevastapol during the Crimean War. The Germans were adept at fortification and could rely on the Hindenburg Line in Northern France in WW1, only finally overrun in 1918. The French at huge cost had already repulsed the Germans at the fortress of Verdun in 1916.

The heroic French at Verdun

The perils of adopting a defensive mentality, somewhere to hide behind, somewhere to be safe, were starkly illustrated by the French Maginot Line, that string of high-tech fortresses and obstacles stretching from the Belgian border to Switzerland. The idea of fixed defensive positions was quite sensible, given French demographic and economic realities, but in the event the 1940 Blitzkrieg by-passed the Line and the Germans invaded through the unpromising terrain of the Ardennes, where the Line was weakest. There is still some truth in the belief that the Maginot Line undermined French morale and dulled more imaginative strategies. The German equivalent, The Siegfried Line, was mocked by the British music hall in 1939, but it took a long wait until 1945 before the Allies could indeed “hang out our washing on the Siegfried Line”. Many fortresses were to see suffering, heroism, triumph and disaster in WW2 of which Tobruk, Stalingrad and Breslau are famous examples.

Just as Churchill said after Dunkirk: Wars are not won by retreats and evacuations, so it must be true that campaigns are won by advances, aggression and mobility, by energy, ruthlessness and enterprise. May the Leavers and Remainders in the forthcoming Brexit Referendum learn whatever lessons they can!

I suppose a typical defender in the wholly different sporting world is abrasive John Terry, erstwhile captain of Chelsea, not everyone’s favourite or Arsenal’s Per Mertesacker, their imposing but lumbering centre-back. In cricket the most celebrated defender is accomplished Geoffrey Boycott, who took a long time to build up his innings, often displeasing the spectators with his Yorkshire self-absorption. The all-rounder who most upset and frustrated the Australians was from a rather earlier generation, Trevor “Barnacle” Bailey, almost impossible to dislodge, his endless forward defensive strokes bringing Antipodean groans especially in the 1953 test series when England regained the Ashes.

Trevor "Barnacle" Bailey hits out

Bailey was of course a useful player in many ways but we all enjoyed much more the cavalier skills of Denis Compton, Ted Dexter or Ian Botham, who really set pulses racing!

SMD

05.03.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016.

THE PERILS OF INERTIA

We British are a cautious and slow-moving people, wanting to take time over momentous decisions, not least the looming one on staying or leaving the European Union. I will spare my readers yet another discussion of the merits or otherwise of that matter but prefer to muse on the contemporary national state of mind and the direction in which it is likely to move. For we are inveterate procrastinators, with favourite expressions like A Leap in the Dark, followed by If it ain’t broke, don’t mend it or more generally Leave well alone, not to mention immortal Mr Micawber’s Waiting for something to turn up.  Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury and 3 times Prime Minister 1885-1902 encapsulated this resistance to change with his mordant comment: Whatever happens will be for the worse, and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.

Victorian Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury

In common with most of the Western world, the British are unhappy about the performance of her so-called “political elite”. The Conservatives have hitherto been relatively unscathed but the sharp decline of the Labour Party and the Social Democrats countered by the rise of the SNP and UKIP reflects a major change. The Conservatives are poised for a fractious period, split by the EU Referendum; they may re-unite afterwards but there may be a more permanent rift – the historical analogy is that of the Canningite (who formed a sect within the Party) or the Peelite Tories, who departed in time to the Liberals.

David Cameron well understands this innate conservatism and will play to it in his Project Fear, designed to put the willies up the great British public. Thus we have some captains of industry (rather fewer than expected) expatiating upon the economic horrors of Brexit. Some of the loudest business Europhiles do not enjoy unalloyed public esteem viz Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, Guy Hands of Terra Firma and even mega-bank HSBC has unwisely thrown its pro-EU hat into the ring with a  forecast of a 20% drop in sterling. Shiver me timbers! Then a clutch of field-marshals and senior military men have said how much safer we are within the EU (shhh.. about Ukraine, Libya, Isil!). In retrospect some of the retired heroes complained about the pressure they felt they were put under and distinguished General Sir Michael Rose was included when he had explicitly declined to sign. This campaign will not be fought under the Geneva Convention.

The Leavers have naturally not been silent. Boris’ economic adviser Gerard Lyons evokes the public’s fear of drowning by likening the EU to The Titanic, advising a rapid exit as the only way to be safe as the EU rushes headlong towards its iceberg. Expect taunts that Cameron is a Nero fiddling while Rome burns (actually Nero could only twang his lyre as the fiddle was not invented until 1500 years later!).

Of course the fact is that in leadership you cannot be inert, you cannot sit on a comfortable fence, you need to get off your backside. Most Britons loved Appeasement, which meant a temporary peace, no upset and they accordingly swallowed whatever story Neville Chamberlain peddled. At last Leadership of an effective and vigorous sort was offered, thank goodness, by Winston. It had been our saviour when Wellington faced Napoleon on the field of Waterloo and Drake attacked the Armada of mighty Spain as it threatened England.

Britain could lapse into a catatonic trance mesmerised by the cloying embrace of Juncker, Tusk and Merkel made plausible by David Cameron. Boris Johnson could bumble and snort for England but he is not a purveyor of the effective and vigorous leadership the Leavers need. Which makes us turn to Michael Gove, a fine and clever fellow, with the added plus of being a Scotsman from Aberdeen.


Destiny calls upon you, Michael, to overcome our inertia and lead us to the sunlit uplands:


Screw your courage to the sticking-place and we’ll not fail!

Michael Gove, called to play a Churchillian role

SMD

27.02.2016

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2016